Purge-and-trap ion chromatography for the determination of trace ammonium ion in high-salinity water samples

It has always been assumed that purge-and-trap (P&T) method is only used for the analysis of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in aqueous samples. In this paper, a novel P&T preconcentrator has been developed for the determination of trace amounts of ammonium ion in high-salinity water samples by ion chromatography (IC). Method performance is evaluated as a function of concentration of assistant purging material, purging time, and flow rate. Under the optimum P&T conditions with the purified nitrogen gas at flow rate 40 mL/min for 15.0 min at 40 °C, the overall collection efficiency is independent of the concentration of ammonium over the range 1.2–5.9 μM. The enrichment factor (EF) of ammonium correlates the ratio of the sample volume to the acceptor solution volume in the trap vessel, providing potentially unlimited increase of the ammonium signal. Our results indicate that environmental samples with low levels of ammonium in matrices with high concentrations of sodium can be easily analyzed and the detection limit down to 75 nM (1.35 ppb) level, corresponding to picomole of ammonia in the injected sample. Calibration graph was constructed with ammonium standards ranging from 0.05 to 6.0 μM and the linearity of the present method was good as suggested by the square of correlation coefficients being better than 0.997. Thus, we have demonstrated that the P&T–IC method allows the routine determination of ammonium ion in seawater samples without cation interferences.